Monday, March 19, 2018

Extract from Winston Churchill’s 1952 request to the British Air Ministry on ‘flying saucers’ (TNA: PREM 11/855)

The spring of 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of my first visit to The National Archives in Kew, southwest London – the guardian of some of the UK’s most iconic national documents.

It also marks ten years since I began my stint as consultant/curator for the release of the Ministry of Defence UFO files, part of a project involving The National Archives and Sheffield Hallam University.

On 8 March I returned to Kew to present a public lecture on completion of my research into the extensive British Government UFO document archive.

During the presentation I listed my personal ‘Top 10’: what I believe

By David Clarke
drdavidclarke.co.uk
3-15-18

are the most significant and important historical documents in the collection at Kew. These were:

1). Prime Minister Winston Churchill‘s memo to the Air Ministry, 1952: ‘What’s all this stuff about flying saucers? What is the truth?’ (PREM 11/855). His request followed a spate of sightings over Washington DC that were widely reported in the UK and international media.

2). ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’: report produced by MoD’s Flying Saucer Working Party in 1951, used to brief Churchill (DEFE 44/119)

3). ‘Unidentified Objects at West Freugh’, the Air (Tech) Intelligence report on UFOs tracked by three ground radar stations in Scotland during April 1957 (AIR 20/9320)

10). ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region’ (the Condign report), 2000 (DEFE 24/3127/1). This 3 volume report ended the MoD Defence Intelligence interest in UFOs that began half a century earlier with the Flying Saucer Working Party report that was used to brief Winston Churchill.

A collection of the original versions of these documents were placed on temporary display for the event. This gave visitors a unique opportunity to examine some of the most famous – and lesser known – records from the files of the so-called ‘UFO desk’. These included the original version of Lt Col Halt’s memo reporting sightings by USAF airmen in the Rendlesham Forest, filed alongside other more run-of-the-mill reports received in January 1981 by DS8 at Whitehall.

The event was organised as part of the National Archives’ spring lecture programme and the public engagement evidence will be used as part of my submission to the REF 2021 research exercise on behalf of Sheffield Hallam University.

The UFO files project was funded by the MoD and resulted in the release of more than 60,000 pages of reports, correspondence and policy issues to the public under the Open Government/Freedom of Information Act.

As a card-carrying member of the mainstream media, De Void derives little pleasure from ragging on colleagues when they mail it in on what will eventually prove to be the greatest story of our time. Yeah, snark can be fun, especially with a field so target rich. But it’s not much of a challenge these days. Mostly, it’s just sad to see how vulnerable the MSM really is when it feels compelled to play catchup with those The Truth Is Out There stories. One of the most wretched examples of our industry failure happened in 2015, when the press made a lemming dash for 50-year-old “top secret” public record government UFO files, and screwed up almost every aspect of it. Good thing there were no consumer safety ramifications.

By Billy Cox
De Void
3-7-18

So it’s going on nearly three months since The New York Times yanked the curtains off the Pentagon’s now-famous UFO study, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. And here we are, corporate media, sitting on our hands again, waiting for the Times or somebody else to run with the ball. Every now and then, on rare occasions, a pulse does twitch the EEG needle. Like last week, at The Fader magazine, when reporter Kelsey McKinney did a little homework and actually tried something different. She picked up the phone. What she came up with was an originalTom DeLonge angle — and one so obvious that nobody thought of it.

Here’s a rambling version of the setup:

How, exactly, does the former Blink-182 front man whose interviews make “less sense than the 40 ‘na’s’ strung together in the chorus of ‘All the Small Things” – a guy whose tales of secret rendezvouses with governmental techno-luminaries sound like, in McKinney’s words, “a conspiracy theory on steroids” – manage to coax some of those same folks off the sidelines to become board members of a still somewhat amorphous corporation called To The Stars Academy?

Well, according to The Fader’s premise, maybe it’s as simple as appealing to wonks who’ve nursed life-long rock-star aspirations of their own. True or not, it’s worth a read.

Anyway, that story is an exception. And last week’s oblivious puff piece by Newsweek more accurately reflects corporate journalism’s status quo. It had a provocative title, “What UFO Encounters Can Tell Us About Fake News and Climate Change Denial,” but even that sounded vaguely familiar. In September, The Atlantic Monthly ran excerpts of Kurt Andersen’s Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, in which Andersen described public “belief” in UFOs as a cornerstone of our widespread delusions.

Newsweek reporter Meghan Bartels approached a historian and University of Pennsylvania doctoral candidate who’s been combing through the old Project Blue Book records for a dissertation. Researcher Kate Dorsch is calling it “Reliable Witnesses, Crackpot Science: The UFO Cold War in America.” On Penn’s site, Dorsch says her “project will also consider current issues in American anti-scientism as they present themselves today, including climate change denial and the anti-vaccination movement, while asking ‘Is UFO belief and study truly anti-science?’ (Currently, she would say no!)”

Bartels had a chance to get Dorsch to put those informed perspectives – along with Dorsch’s intriguing working conclusion – in context with the Pentagon’s $22 million UFO study. That might really set Newsweek up for a decent essay. Instead, Bartels stays in the shallow end and equivocates about “the division over what constitutes authority,” a phrase she uses twice. Sounds like a deadline flub. Hellooo, I need that UFO piece yesterday — hellooo! But if you want to know how this blown opportunity occurred, just look at how Newsweek has been handling this AATIP thing.

Since mid-December, the online version of the formerly relevant weekly has published at least eight pieces on the Great Taboo, all but one of which – Bartels’ submission last week – merely summarized all the other stories. Newsweek’s 12/17 article is a rehash of the Times’ AATIP coup. Newsweek’s 12/18 followup regurgitated the Times and the New York Daily News. On 12/19, Newsweek condensed the reporting of CNN, the Times, and the Washington Post without adding a lick of original material.

On 12/20, Newsweek trolled CNN’s interview with America’s celebrity astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and came up with this clever lead: “Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn’t give an F about all this UFO talk.” OK, what about a D-minus? Anyway, at least this story made a pretense of trying to perform due diligence by throwing in this line: “The White House did not answer a request for comment from Newsweek” about whether or not President Trump would renew AATIP’s funding. Yay.

On 12/24, Newsweek relied exclusively on the Daily Telegraph’s profile on former AATIP director Luis Elizondo to fill the hole. On Christmas Day, it rewrote a Hollywood Reporter story on director Guillermo del Toro’s long-ago UFO sighting. And on 12/29, Newsweek rewrote an interview MIT radio astronomer John Ball gave to Science Alert.

Now, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with rewriting news stories so long as you provide sourcing; De Void wouldn’t be blogging today if it weren’t for other people doing the work. News aggregators have their place, I guess. But the most telling aspect of Newsweek’s UFO coverage is, the eight stories mentioned above have seven different bylines. How might that affect the big picture? Hm. One thing it means is that one poor reporter drew the short straw twice. Sorry, kiddo, it’s either that or mop the floor.

De Void suspects Newsweek could manage its online sausage factory more efficiently. For starters, why pay part-timers and freelancers to expectorate cold UFO hash that everybody already knows about? Why not assign them to something with a little more cleavage, like the Stormy Daniels beat? That’d be monster traffic, man.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Security cameras recorded a strange object in a Barranca waterfront. Some claim it was a UFO.

By Inexplicata
3-16-18

An unidentified flying object crossing the skies of Barranca was picked up by security cameras yesterday morning (03.12.2018) around 3:00 a.m. Images disseminated over social media show a radiant, zig-zagging luminous phenomenon over the Malecón de Chorrillos of this northern city.

The security cameras were engaged in their routine task of filming the waterfront area from the last block on Avenida Grau when they suddenly picked up this object, which could have been a UFO. The camera managed to focus on the object's oval shape before vanishing completely.

This is the first time that such a phenomenon has been recorded. According to the website of the regional newspaper "El Libertador", this video, with a duration of two minutes and fifteen seconds, has already elicited a variety of opinions. However, it has been confirmed that the image is real.

Social media users claimed it was a UFO. Others suggested that it was a psycho-social phenomenon using fake imagery and that the cameras were best used in catching criminals up to no good.

Another cybernaut stated that this phenomenon occasionally takes place in the stratosphere and that no strange object is involved. Was it a UFO? You be the judge.

Physicist Stephen Hawking died at his home in Cambridge, England, on Wednesday.

[...]

By Andrew Whalen
Newsweek
3-14-18

In 2010, Hawking ... describing the dangers of first contact with aliens in a Discovery Channel documentary. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans,” Hawking says. “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach,” Hawking said in the documentary, Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. documentary. “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.”

“Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach,” Hawking said.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

... coming from the north and heading south was one,
single structure that looked like a giant boomerang ..."

I awoke from a brief nap in my recliner and leaned over to tell my wife that I was going to bed. I glanced to the clock on the television, it was 8:30 pm. As I walked down the hallway to the master bedroom, I noticed the bedroom window was open. The weather was most pleasant this March 13 evening, temp. 75 degrees, clear and no wind.(Jim Schnebelt Fox 10 weather) Typical Arizona spring evening.

I ran down the hallway, grabbed my glasses off the bar and yelled to my wife, of 25 years, "get outside right now!" Without hesitation she followed me out the back arcadia door to the edge of our patio. (I have timed this since and it took app. 8-10 sec)

Standing at the edge of our patio, facing west, and looking north, confussion struck me. For there was no plane crash, but coming from the north and heading south was one, single structure that looked like a giant boomerang. (the description of boomerang, chevron (best), and V shaped object all apply). This object stuck out like a sore thumb in the evening sky due to the fact we were looking north towards the Phoenix metro area, and the city lights gave us a grey background in which to view this huge black V shaped object. It was so low to the surface we could not believe it. I remember saying, "what the hell is that?"

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

The huge mass – at least a mile wide – approached from the North West. I could land on it with my 727. We began to eliminate possibilities. What ever it was seemed to be following the Tonto One arrival, the standard jet arrival routing for instrument traffic into PHX on an approximate heading of 120°. I estimated its altitude to be 10,000 feet.

No C-130’s, it wasn’t a formation of jets – too slow for either of them. Helicopters? Not that either – no “wop-wop,” no sound. None. Cessna’s wired with weird lights? Its happened, but that wasn’t the case on March 13th.

After a few minutes of observation we concluded that this was one object. There was zero movement between its massive forward-facing amber lights. I should have counted the lights, should have run for a camera and called my friend Bob Mohan, a local talk radio guy. The craft had intercepted Scottsdale Road, and made a right turn to approximately 180º following it south. It was headed right for Mo’s house.

"This seems ... to be one of the biggest stories of my lifetime, and I don't care if it's about UFOs or whatever you call it, something that we don't understand it getting very close to our military aircraft and the government isn't responding adequately, and I hope you keep sounding the alarm on this"–Tucker Carlson

Editor's Note: In another interview, this time with former Pentagon UFO Investigator Luis Elizondo (watch below), concerning the recently revealed, previously secret Pentagon program; along with the newly released (the 3rd) video taken by Navy F-18s in pursuit of same;

By Frank Warren
The UFO Chronicles
3-13-18

host Tucker Carlson expresses his concern over the magnitude of the disclosure and the government’s failure to respond accordingly. In part, Carlson remarks:

“The bottom line is—this is a potential threat, a grave one to our country!”

Monday, March 12, 2018

GO FAST is the third of three official USG videos selected for release after official review by multiple government organizations. While To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science was the first to obtain a copy, it should be available to any member of the press or

By tothestarsacademy.com
3-9-18

public via the Freedom of Information Act. This footage was captured by a U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet using the Raytheon ATFLIR Pod that was being operated by a highly trained aerial observer and weapons system operator whom the government has spent millions of dollars to train. Go Fast reveals a Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast of the United States in 2015 and the object in view remains unidentified. Read further analysis of what is being observed in Go Fast by our team of experts including additional videos and reports on our community of interest:

We have no idea what’s behind these weird incidents because we’re not investigating.

In December, the Defense Department declassified two videos documenting encounters between U.S. Navy F-18 fighters and unidentified aircraft. The first video captures multiple pilots observing and discussing a strange, hovering, egg-shaped craft, apparently one of a “fleet” of such objects, according to cockpit audio. The second shows a similar incident involving an F-18 attached to the USS Nimitz carrier battle group in 2004.

By Christopher Mellon
The Washington Post
3-9-18

The videos, along with observations by pilots and radar operators, appear to provide evidence of the existence of aircraft far superior to anything possessed by the United States or its allies. Defense Department officials who analyze the relevant intelligence confirm more than a dozen such incidents off the East Coast alone since 2015. In another recent case, the Air Force launched F-15 fighters last October in a failed attempt to intercept an unidentified high-speed aircraft looping over the Pacific Northwest.

A third declassified video, released by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science , a privately owned media and scientific research company to which I’m an adviser, reveals a previously undisclosed Navy encounter that occurred off the East Coast in 2015 (below).

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